This episode is broken into two parts, part 2 is continued about half-way down the page beneath the vegetable picture ...

I am very very excited to have my guest join us today for a special Father’s Day episode of the Organic Gardener Podcast. Coming to us from the Long Island Sound, close to where I grew up, is a special father who’s daughter Alethea introduced us, after she was on my show in episode 32 back on April 9th, 2015. She told me the story of a natural educator who loved gardening and would take her around the neighborhood as a child and they would plant garden’s for friends and neighbors.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’ve been gardening since I was a kid, and it kind of developed in the last 15 years into a farm, a small farm maybe 8 acres, well it is 8 acres. I ended up doing a market with a friend of mine who started an organic market only. She had 2 farmers and one was just starting out, and I hadn’t even started out. She said I need some help, I need two farmers, the market will be a lot better.

I had stuff growing, and it was early in May, and I started growing a few more things and it was just like a hobby, and before you know it I actually had another farmer who was conventionally growing who wanted to grow on my farm, that’s what I wanted to see happen. Unfortunately that didn’t work out for the long term, so I kind of took over, because I had certified for him, with him and I doing it together, he was my neighbor where we are on Eastern Long Island. We had 9/11, he lost his truck at the World Trade Center, he kind of cooled off in Organics. I think someone was giving him, he was doing markets also, and they weren’t into organics enough he was too ingrained in his way as a conventional farmer.

Anyway, one thing led to another, I ended up 1 tractor, 2 tractors, 3 tractors, and all kinds of equipment, nothing fancy, increasing every year, what I’m growing, and the yield of course it’s certified organic, by OMRI.

Basically that was my second job, I’m a contractor, I still do kitchens, baths, but farming takes up too much of my time. That’s kind of like a little background.

I like that then, it must be profitible if you are able to not have to take as many contractor jobs and make a living off of farming, and also if you’re buying tractors it sounds like you’re turning a fair profit.

Well, it’s not earth shaking, but it’s not the year, they’re nothing to sell, well they’re stuff to sell if you store it, but usually after Christmas there’s some down time, usually you before you start seeding for the next season. But also I’ve been buying some seedlings, so I don’t have to heat my greenhouse, because it’s cost effective way, buy seedlings from certified organic growers of course.

It’s $3-4 a pound on long Island here and probably $4-5 for an heirloom tomato.

I do 3 crops of tomatoes and I only buy the first crop.

 Where do you get them from?

Other farms, that also have greenhouses, that sell retail and wholesale there are several good sources.

Conneticut, upstate NY, some I’ve been buying from for years. Mac Enroe organic farm produce really beautiful plants, they have a composting facility, they use their own compost, and they sell the compost.

My farm is not really a true business, it is and it isn’t. I probably could have grown more, I don’t do CSA’s they seem to be more profitable. They have a more steady secure income, they’ll sell 500-1000 shares in their farm, and they get the money up front so the risk is taken out of it, And they just have to provide vegetables for 24 weeks out of the year.

I could have made more money that way, basically I’m a one man operation with a helper, and I hire other helpers when I need them. Especially some crops are very weed intensive, carrots and beets

Once you get the weeding done, then you still have to pick it and  sell it!

Peter Vasilas shares a passion and love of gardening and growing organic Orient Organics Farm on Long Island in NY.

The post Bonus Father’s Day Episode 56: Peter Vasilas | Certified Organic Farmer from Orient Organics Farm | Long Island Sound, NY Part 2 appeared first on Organic Gardener Podcast.

Peter Ramos has been gardening on Long Island’s temperate climate for almost 20 years, and has learned many methods for being effective and efficient with a busy family life. He’ll share successful strategies for creating healthy compost, planting perennial beds that look beautiful and enhancing the landscape and some trials and tribulations of growing trees.

Tell us a little about yourself.

Live in the suburbs about 30 miles, a little over an hour from New York City on Long Island, kind of the opposite of the Peter you talked to yesterday who lives further out on the island, so your classic suburb, part of a sort of development area, we've lived here almost 20 years.  So I live here with my wife and 2 daughters. And you could reference the interview you did with our mom on episode 10 and you could get two perspective growing up on Long Islands. I like you were very influenced by our parents, both my wife and I love gardening alot.

I could talk about how they influenced me to doing a compost pile. Growing up we did that, and when of the first things we did when we first moved in, I’m not gonna say I did it right away, but after a couple of years, we were lucky enough to have a little area behind the garage which was out of site, cause it's one of those things where everyone has to make those decisions.

If they're doing a compost pile, like where am I gonna put it?

Cause it's not the super most attractive thing, so where am I gonna put it, do I have to worry about smell, or anything and animals. And I was able to find this area, I put it behind the garage by the fence. The first one I bought this border type fence, and I put that in the ground, and I carved out between a 4'x8' area. It's like 2’ or 3’ wood slats, the kind of thing you put around the garden, like a white picket fence, rolled up. I don't know how else to describe it, but a border fence. That was the first go around. That lasted many years, then we remodeled the house, it got neglected, there was like debris on top of it, and it sort of got away from us. So then last year, I was finally able to get it going again, basically the second round, I was able to find some 2x4s and cut those up and put those into the ground and use some chicken wire up. So these are different ways of attacking it.

I guess you can use some lime if you get smell, but we never had smell. Because we have a dog, we have a fenced in yard, which probably also helps. People think - the suburb we live in, we get racoons, and possums, you get squirrels & rabiits, etc, because we have a cat and adog, we never have too many problems with pests or occassionally we get a squirrel who I guess attacks certain things.

So in the decision you have to think about where am I gonna put it and how am I gonna conatin it? So there are things I always talk to people about. Do you want to put it behind some shrubs, where is a good spot maybe that is gonna be tucked away? It's not the most attractive thing for people to look at. We've been lucky that way. And also, in terms of building it, I was lucky to have some found things around it was really easy to do, and now we're very excited about it again!

Do you want to share what you put in it?

Pretty basic. All of our vegetable scraps from our food prep, we do a lot of cooking. Through spring, summer, into fall, go dormant for the winter.  We add egg shells, coffee grinds, tea, tea bags, then of course we try to do as much, grass clippings, obviously the grass that's cut we put in there. Then we do that throughout that period, then we reach that point, where we get in the fall, and just cover it with leaves, let it sit through the winter, then come the spring you turn it over and you've got it to use. And that's basically it and it works out pretty well.

The things we do the most any more is planters on the deck, my wife uses it that way, that it’s been really successful.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I worked mainly with the program manager who promoted Organic Agriculture. Doing that job was so exciting!  I was already doing the organic gardening but I learned about doing Ag on both large and small scales. I have lived in numerous places from San Francisco and Seattle to London, and also Helena 8 years. I always dreamed of coming back to the Flathead here, so 8 years ago I moved back here and bought a little house here just a few block close to where I grew up.

Tell me about your first gardening experience? Yours was probably in Kalispell huh?

Yes it was, I can remember going back to when I was 4 years old, my father had a big garden in the backyard, I loved going back there and hanging out with him, and pulling a few weeds, and mostly I’d help myself to the produce, I’d pull out a carrot and knock off the dirt without even washing it. I love picking the raspberries and the asparagus, but mostly what I got out of that experience besides spending time with dad, I got to see how much peace and joy it gave him to grow things and see them grow from seedling to produce and being able to feed his family with this really fresh garden produce. That made a huge impression on me, and I admired that he kept on expanding the fence and doubling the size of it, so we didn’t need the garden as much to play in.

When I got to be a young adult, I thought I need a garden, it’s necessary for my physical and mental health. So for all for a very few years when I was either traveling or living in a place that didn’t have a garden space, I’ve gardened almost every year since then on some level even if it was small.

What does organic gardening/earth friendly mean to you?

To me, it just makes perfect sense, that we would cooperate hand in hand with nature, that we would observe what nature does with how things grow on it’s own, without any input from humans. Nature makes it’s own compost, trees drop their leaves and needles where they are, we can see what grows with the compost, underneath the trees out in fields and meadows. We learn how bees pollinate things, there’s just no end to lessons we can learn from what nature does. We humans we like to think we’re so smart and that we can do things better then nature, but we tend to get in a lot of trouble when we do that. Actually nature is a lot smarter then we are, and she’s been at it a lot longer, and she knows what she’s doing, we need to pay attention.

Who or what inspired you to start using organic techniques?

Well Dad, wasn’t an organic gardener, I don’t know who taught him to garden, but he did use conventional fertilizers, but when I was learning how to garden on my own. I would talk to dad on the phone sometimes, but mostly I got some books at the library and they just happened to be mostly on organic gardening. And I got Organic Gardening Magazine and got a lot of advice from that and I talked to lots of other gardeners and they were mostly organic gardeners and I learned a lot doing it myself and I made a lot of mistakes. And I still make a lot of mistakes, and it just makes sense to me, “I’m not about to outsmart Mother Nature, she knows what she’s doing.”

How did you learn how to garden organically?

Every year, I run some experiments, those could be as simple as planting a variety of potato that I never planted before, just to see what it will do, whether it will grow well in my soil?

I also do things, I have a lot of shade, I have a small lot, it’s only a 10th of an acre,

Neke and Jeremy Wyble are searching for the perfect homestead and permaculture site. They are exploring different places around the globe they are "WOOFing it" to learn about the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms and honing their skills as gardeners living a sustainable lifestyle. Check out their blog at the Wayfaring Wybles where you can follow their adventures!

Jeremy: First we met in 2013, taking a course in permaculture, we got married a year ago and moved to a place in NE Pennsylvania in a place called Sullivan County, where my family has vacation cabin land. It is a great opportunity to learn, and test run a homesteading lifestyle, sharpen our skills and learn more about organic gardening.

Neke: We're also experimenting with some new techniques. We're doing the homestead thing while we live here, but also in-between we're traveling in search of our own homestead land, and as we travel, we're doing WWOOFing.

It's basically program where people go onto organic farms or homestead, or community gardens, and you get free room and board for a few hours of work a day, and when you're work is done, you have free time to yourself to explore the location and that's the time where we've been looking for our own land where we would like to homestead some day. It's been  great.

Jeremy: It’s more economical for us on a tight budget and we get to play in the garden, while we're sear ching for land, and it's been a great experience.

Neke: Highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in gardening and also traveling.

Tell us about one of the places you went to as a WWOOFer that was super exciting.

We had the luxury of a 3 month stint in Argentina, all the way to the Patagonia region of the Andes Mountains, so that was incredible. Rio Rasol ... Surreal, see these beautiful mountains.

Each country has sort of their own WWOOF program, there’s WWOOF USA, WWOOF Argentina, WWOOF Australia. You get a membership, you pay for a membership for these programs within each countries.

You get a list of WWOOF hosts, you read the description of the type of work you will be doing, then you get in touch with the host and see if it would be a good fit, and also about timing, and how long you're intending to stay, that sort of thing.

We decided on 3 months, when we got married, Jeremy was hell bent on moving to Patagonia, beautiful country, amazing climate, we can go, but we can’t go for 2 weeks we need to really be immersed in it, to see if this is a place that your interested in truly living. So 3 months seemed like an appropriate length of time. First, I have to say, Jeremy didn't speak any Spanish so I was sort of stuck with my broken Spanish. Red light right there! So we did that. Needless to say after the 3 months as beautiful as it was, our plans changed, this might not be the place for us, we might need to go somewhere where they speak English.

Jeremy: We’re thinking our next adventure will be New Zealand, we'll see how it goes.

We ended up WWOOFing up at many different locations which they spoke English, so that limits our ability to practice Spanish. No we bounced around, different parts of the country, I think 5 WWOOF sites total.

Argentina, is so big. We also wanted to see as much of it as possible .

I knew one friend, but he wasn’t there, he was supposed to be there, but he wasn't but he opened his door and we hung out with his family for a couple of days and had a great time, in Cordoba! But other then that no. No cell phone, made it a nice interesting adventure. Taking a bus, 20 hour bus trips, all over the country!

The bamboo retreat? North of Buenos Ares there's a river delta where the whole community is only accessible by small boats and canals, we ended up WWOOFing there for a week, it was a bamboo operation, we’d go out with machetes and wack down bamboo and manage it into a nice grov...

July 4 Break

The post July 4, 2015 Break appeared first on Organic Gardener Podcast.

No time to sit still for this veteran, he’s a baker by day, gardener by night, good luck keeping up with this gentleman. Get ready to have your mouth watering at the sounds of cheese twists, jalepeno fire tongues and huckleberry muffins he bakes at his German Bakery called the Backstube Edelweiss in Arlee, MT. He also shares tips on growing in our challenging Montana climate and some money saving ideas for extending your season with homemade hoop-houses.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a born native Montanan, lived in Europe for 30 years and then decided to come back to Montana. The time I was in Europe and Germany, I didn’t do a lot of farming, but I did know a lot of older farmers that were in their 60’s and 70’s back then and that was quite a few years ago, they showed me a lot of simple but very effective gardening tips and stuff like that, it all has to do with simplicity. The easier you make it, usually the better it is. This is the first year that I’ve had the garden here. I also have a bakery.

The bakery got started because of Europe, I really missed their breads and pasteries, so we started going to the farmers market with baked goods and next thing you know I have this full blown bakery, which supports the community very well and the community supports us very well, and it’s kind of the way it goes with gardening, you know, it’s one hand washes the other, it’s fun and I enjoy it! It’s a lot of work, yes, but I think the proceeds are better, they say, you harvest what you sow ...

Gardening, everybody glorifies organic now-a-days, they say you need to be organic certified through the agricultural department and pay all of these fees through the agriculture department to get a certificate to be organic. To me, if a person has a garden, its their conscious that lets them say, either I’m organic or not. If I dump 40 gal of chemical to make it grow, there’s no way in the world I can say I’m organic.  But if I take 5lbs of chicken manure, then yes, I can say it organic fertilizer, it’s not chemical, it’s organic. To me organic is going back to the basics of life, keeping things neat. Weeds are a problem, maybe you’re harvest isn’t quite as big as Joe next door that’s using Mircale Grow and all this other stuff in his garden, but I think mine probably tastes better.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

Born in Kalispell, and raised in a little town between East and West Glacier called Essex. Essex was my very first gardening experience, I was probably 8 years old, the only thing we had growing season time, a little bit of lettuce and radishes.

The growing season’s probably from the first part of June till the end of August, if you have that long of a period even? If you’re not getting your crop eaten by deer. Almost dead center between East and West Glacier, on Highway 2, which is a fun highway, it's got a lot of neat scenery. Horseradish grows really well up there, and rhubarb. But gardening itself was basically just radishes and lettuce.

Then in the early '70s to mid 70's we moved down to the West Valley side of Kalispell, we went from a little garden in Essex to a garden down there that was probably about 20 x 80. That was more from necessity then pleasure, we had a pretty good size family, and times back in the '70’s were pretty hard ... Then we started to garden. My step-dad was the one that was kind of the instigator of it all, and us kids had to do it all of the work.

Then I joined the military and went to Europe, that’s where I started. I had a little garden but didn’t really have a lot of time to do anything with it. I talked to lots of the older generation, Germans, after I learned to speak the language, learning all the different type of natural Naturheilkunde I forget what they call it in English, Homeopathic, natural medicines and herbs and stuff like that different natural herbs, that you can do, make tea out of them.

Billy Gray has been selling plants at the Missoula Farmer's Market for about 25 years! She has two businesses: Billy Gray Landscape Design and Grace Note Gardens. She does everything from garden consulations and recommendations to plant identification as a landscape designer. Billy Gray shares her passion and knowledge for caring for our yards and planet in a healthy way.

I’m an independent gardner and business, I’ve been doing this since 1972. I do consultations and recommendations and plant identification, and I sell plants. Some that I dig out of my garden, and some I order in and grow up to be able to have a wider variety. I've been happy to be in the (Missoula Farmer’s) Market I think for 25 years now!

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

My mom was a great gardener. There were things she allowed me to assist with and I thought I was being very helpful and most of time she had to come back and redo whatever I did. I think I was about 5 or 6, and I think that that’s probably a lot of the same sort of events that happen when you're a little kid. Then we moved around a lot and we had a lot of other experiences in different places.

One of the best things I remember from that period was that she had a compost pile and she threw potato peelings and everything into it, and lo and behold potatoes would grow and it was always fun to dig out the potatoes!

What does organic gardening mean to you?

Improving the soil as much as it can be, as it can support magically of course, whatever you want to put in it, as far as your plants or your veggies or trees. Im a great one for feeding the soil good stuff and teach people if you don’t feed the soil there isn’t going to be anything in there. Montana has really rich mineral soil, but there’s not very much in the way of the organic factor, so compost is essential and good compost is sometimes hard to come by so best to make your own, if you don’t know what your sources are for it, you can get into trouble. We had a rash of bad compost in Missoula a few years back, where people were getting their compost from manures that the cows had been feeding on pastures that was sprayed with Tordon which never breaks down I don’t think so I can get pretty excited over that. Of course when they plant their things in it, it has a very bad effect on your produce.

Who or what inspired you to start using organic techniques?

I belonged to garden clubs for a long time, and we had quite a few here in this area and they were very active and there quite a few people who went both ways with their things, and got quite excited about what was going on new that was introduced every year.

I can’t say I’m absolutely entirely organic, I don’t grow things with a lot of chemicals, there are some herbicides are very touchy, but there are some things out there I don’t know what we’re gonna do when they decide to take over the world,  the bad weeds that are so greedy and they just keep coming no matter what you do.

Like spotted knapweed? Is that what you mean?

No, unless you have acres of it that you have to deal with, how can you do a farm that has 500 acres of knapweed on it? You can't even get from one end to the other if you're trying to pull it. It is pull-able! It's just that the seed is viable for 50 years, so keep it mowed!

I think there’s some bugs you can get from the extension service that eat it. And sheep like to eat knapweed.

And the sheep really like to eat the knapweed, but that of course, that's the like pinching back a plant, if you take the top off then it sprouts again.

Miriam Goldberger is the author of a new book that is not just informative but absolutely elegant called Taming Wildflowers.

Miriam and her husband Paul Jenkins have been tending the Wildflower Farm in Southern Ontario, Canada since 1988. They also developed Eco-Lawn™ which is a drought-tolerant, low maintenance turf grass that is grown at homes and businesses across North America.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I have been growing flowers since 1985, 1986, and Wildflower Farm was founded in 1988. I began by being captivated by the process of growing flowers from seed. It originally Wildflower Farm, back in the day it was a dried wildflower farm, then it morphed into Canada's first pick your own flower farm and I had acres and acres of flowers, annuals and perennials not natives at that time to tend to. I became interested in wildflowers because they were low maintenance, I needed some gardens that weren't for the pick your owns, that were for display that tended to themselves basically. So I researched the topic and found that perennials; North American Wildflowers and Native Grasses that are such low maintenance! It astounded me! Once they were established, they didn’t need to be watered, they didn't need to be fertilized, they just took care of themselves they lived for a very long, long time.

So I put in some gardens, little gardens just to decorate the place that weren't for pick your own. And people started asking me about the gardens, and they wanted us to landscape places at their gardens just like those gardens and they also wanted us to sell them wildflower plants. And we received so much interest in the wildflowers, the landscaping the plants, that eventually we succomed to the  customers, and began to seriously study wildflowers and indeed became wildflower landscapers and started a native landscape nursery  and destination point that was in existence for over 25 years!

And so I really learned a lot about wildflowers over the years, I learned how to grow native plants from seed, how to landscape with wildflowers either using only wildflowers or to incorporate flowers into an existent non-native garden. And also how to truly grow a wildflower meadow, the way most of us think the way wildflower meadows should be grown isn't really the case, and it's not a hard thing to do, but it is different then what you think it might be and then we also developed Eco-Lawn™ which is a low maintenance turf grass that really is such a great answer to drought problems and high maintenance expensive. There’s been a busy time, never a dull moment.

Well how do you grow a wildflower meadow? I guess you don't just broadcast the seeds on to a pile of dirt?

There are a lot of people who ask: Can you just throw the seeds anywhere? Can I throw them on my lawn? Can I just throw them on my garden? If I throw them out into a ditch will they grow? Well, most of the time the answer is no, and there’s a few key reasons for that.

First  of all, when most of us North Americans encounter seeds being sold, there in a big bag of seeds, with pretty pictures on it, or a can of seeds, or a pack of seeds and they're usually not true North American wildflowers, most of the time they're some random blend of European wildflowers, or not even wildflowers but plants from somewhere else that don't tend to do well in here in the hot, very difficult conditions that we have through much of North America. If you and I happened to live in England where it rained a lot and they had this lovely perfect soil, and it's much warmer then most parts of North America, then maybe so but here, we need to use the plants that have grown here successfully for many many thousands of years. And those are the North American Wildflowers that I specialize in.

We have so many extraordinary wildflowers and native grasses that work beautifully here. No matter what conditions you have in your garden there’s a wildflower th...

Tell us a little about yourself.

James Brake is creator. I’m born and raised in Mississippi and spent a lot of time on my grandfather’s farm. Was a very technically oriented kid. Went off to travel in the world for a number of years, always stayed in computers, but always had multiple home gardening projects including hydroponics to grow vegetables and stuff when I lived in California and I've taken it to a new step here.

Now you're in Hawaii, right? Are you all in Hawaii?

Yes, we are all in Hawaii.

Greg, I’m originally from NJ, after college did a lot of work in technical sales, taking an engineering degree to kind of help folks develop businesses and technological solutions and deliver those solutions accordingly, as well.

Krysta Carmack, was unable to connect without static so she types a few answers here and there.

The Growbot, is about the size of a coffee table, and what it does is it grows a salad pretty much everyday in that coffee table are size. It uses hydroponics, kind of automation for adding the plant food and adding the water, so you don't have to think about it. You just put it in your backyard, connect the hose, you put in your seeds, and then about ten days later most of your seeds should have sprouted, so you take off the germination cups, and about 4 weeks later most lettuce is ready to start harvesting. Most of the varieties of lettuce that we recommend that you grow is the kind that perpetually grows new leaves. You can also grow kale, carrots, and other types of root vegetables, there's an area of that as well. That's kind of the basics of it.

The core thing is it’s very very easy to use is what I was striving for and also it's very economical.  For getting that salad a day, plus some kale and some other vegetables on less then a dollar a day in plant food, which is just  a mixture of bird manure which is guano, seaweed, folic acid, which are all naturally sourced. Folic acid is in soil and sea water, it's a naturally occurring substance, source for this is a mineral called leonardite.

So it's on Kickstarter? 

It's gonna be on Indiegogo.

I’ve been building prototypes, testing out the technology for about 7 years.

I started in California with a really big one, that my wife wasn’t happy with how big it was, it wasn't portable. So the next one that I built, had a much smaller footprint, and was portable so if we wanted to have a barbecue or the kids want to use the backyard for kickball etc., we could easily move it out of the way and then move it back to the center of yard, where the best light was. Then we moved to Hawaii, and we built this Growbot. So this Growbot has the small footprint and we can just pick it up with 2 people and move it back to where you want it.

It's got 7 years of work on it, multiple versions of it, looking for what worked best. This particular model, we started on it, and finished this design late last year,  actually had it completed early January, and the first plants growing in early February. We have it all documented. We haven’t had to buy lettuce since early March, kale came in a few weeks, later and that's been doing fantastic. And we've had tomatoes, and cucumbers and things like that.

I love this idea because it's going to enable people who want to grow lettuce and vegetables in the winter, could you have it in the winter, is there enough light? I guess you could have grow lights?

Absolutely. You can totally use grow lights, they are becoming much more economical to purchase and to operate, they're called compact fluorescents, or LEDs. Both of those are pretty economical. We're going to come up with a package to set up in a garage or another spare room that's convenient you just have to have a water fitting so you can connect the water. We want to keep the automation cause that's where people get into trouble, they forget to water it.

Yeah,